


side by side

by asiren (meliorismo)



Category: Devilman (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Domestic, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 15:07:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13367271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meliorismo/pseuds/asiren
Summary: holding the pieces, building a life.





	side by side

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this is my fluffy contribution to the fandom of this anime that means so much to me. we are all together in this hell ride. our boat is almost a wreck but lets just...keep breathing  
> unrevised.

Akira walked into the flat, demon blood everywhere, painting yellow all that white (quiet pristine), looking for Ryo’s familiar silhouette against the window — which where the spot he would usually be at that hour, staring at the sunset, projecting efficiency and calm. He wasn’t there, though; Akira started to feel uneasy about the whole thing. Isn’t it inappropriate to someone to be at other people’s house without them being there? More importantly, would Ryo be a little angry, perhaps — he wouldn’t be _mad,_ Akira wasn’t even sure if he was capable of something like that —, seeing it as some kind of invasion? He really took privacy extremely serious. Although if Akira was basically living there, which someone could think was true, should it really matter?

(What could he do if not overthink?

Should he stay, should he leave?)

“You’re here.” Ryo said a little suddenly, his voice coming from the corridor, footsteps sounding closer and then closer and then closer until he was basically all over Akira’s vision field, dripping wet and half-clothed, unbothered about it all. “What happened? All this blood... You should at least take a shower.”

Then, Ryo promptly proceeded to grab Akira’s arm and drag him around the place, walking to the furthest door that was the guest bathroom, ignoring — somewhat deliberately — the mess that was becoming his floor. Akira felt bad about the ugliness of the picture he was painting, and tried to reclaim his arm back. He couldn’t, though, because Ryo refused to let go. If Akira insisted, well, it was possibly, but it would just be unthinkable. He could offend Ryo, who was his whatever (best friend? _boy_ friend? Akira just wasn’t capable of handling the proper names). He could hurt him, which was even worse.

“What are you doing?” Akira asked him, while being shoved on the bathtub.

“Take your clothes off.” Ryo answered promptly, ignoring every part of the situation that he didn’t like, as was the usual with him. Akira went along, because he always did — he couldn’t think of a single moment in which he said _no_ to Ryo without it being about a life-or-death decision —, and this song that they were playing was one they had rehearsed thousands of times before. After a while, he was naked, and that was it. “You’re a mess.”

“I know. You should have seen the other guy.”

“What were you thinking? You said you didn’t want to do that today.” _or ever_ , he could have said. It was true enough. They’d had this big fight the day before (the reason Akira wasn’t so sure of his reception and thought, _best just end it, I’m going to kill some demons and then show there_ ), about how he was tired of killing — and the irony really wasn’t lost on him. Ryo couldn’t understand because his job was basically edit the truth, and he was cold-hearted at it anyway. He shouldn’t have said that, though. It was mean.

“I ran into a few demons when I was going home from school. I couldn’t help it; they knew what I was right away.” which was, technically, true. Ryo didn’t look impressed.

“It was dangerous.” he told Akira, very neutrally. That was how he knew that there was trouble.

“I didn’t get hurt.” Akira answered, helpfully. “None of this blood is mine.”

“You’re acting reckless.” Ryo hit him with the sponge bath that he was using to scrub away half of Akira’s right arm. It didn’t hurt, but Akira felt attacked all the same.

“It was your idea!”

“I didn’t plan for you to get yourself killed—”

“And I didn’t!”

Ryo sighed, glared at him, sighed again. Shook his head in this _very_ unimpressed way. _Drama queen,_ Akira thought, fondly. He always liked everything about Ryo, from head to toe, from soul to (very nice) body.

“Shut up.” he ended up saying, throwing water at Akira’s face shamelessly. “It really is only a matter of time.”

**//**

Akira cuddled the little dog on his arms, trying to make the option look more likable to Ryo. He even tried to shake the puppy’s small paw as if hopefully waving. Ryo rose an eyebrow, but that was about it. Akira sighed, and dropped the plan A. It was time for plan B. “I found her on the street. She was abandoned!”

“So what? I don’t like dogs.”

“Are you going to throw her away? Don’t you have a heart?”

“Why won’t _you_ take her?”

“They already have a cat there! A mean cat, which was worse! It wouldn’t be a nice place to raise Lola.”

“Does she have a name, then?” Ryo asked, disdainfully.

“I gave it to her just now. So you can’t really change it!”

“I don’t have to accept her at all.”

“It’s mean, Ryo. It’s just so mean.” he made Lola wave her paw a few more times, trying to play some kind of oh-what-a-good-puppy trick. He didn’t look impressed; but it was Ryo, who would look very bored in the face of Paul McCartney.

“Why do you like her so much? The world isn’t looking nice for someone that fragile to live on. She is, in a sense, already dead.”

“No, she isn’t!”

“Yes, she is.”

“No, she isn’t!”

“Yes, she is.”

“If you believe that so much, then why don’t you take her in and change it?” Akira yelled at him, using his body to protect her from Ryo, because he still remembered very well the cat situation from when they were small.

Ryo sighed, entirely exhausted with the whole thing. “I don’t have to do that.”

“But you could.”

“I don’t ha—”

“Ryo, please!” Akira threw a remote control at him, his aim so far off that it almost hit the window. “Can you please, just this once, do it for me?”

“I don’t think—”

_Well,_ Akira thought, _so much for a nice attitude._ “If she doesn’t stay here, and alive!, then I will never come again. Ever. I will be done with you.”

“All this about a _dog_?”

“All this because you can’t just do a nice thing! Your first reaction is always to hit the person in the face. Worse than that, all the while you’re like, yelling _no, thanks._ ”

Ryo looked at the puppy, very dubiously, as if she were a particularly gross bug. “Is her name Lola?”

“Yes.” Akira waved the whole puppy at Ryo, who didn’t step away immediately. Lola barked happily at the change of events.

“I guess she will have to stay.” he took her over, his holding game somewhat awkward. Akira asked himself, _did he ever had a puppy?_

He couldn’t ask that, though — that would be very mean.

Akira smiled at them both, happy beyond frontiers, and thought _well._

( _aren’t they both beautiful?_ )

**//**

Akira took Ryo’s hand, which was like just hanging there, because he was napping on the couch and Akira was napping on the floor. He kissed it, and Ryo almost hit him in the face. He rolled over and stared at Akira, as if saying _you almost killed me!._ Akira, though, wasn’t impressed; Ryo must have felt when someone randomly held his hand. He slept so lightly that sometimes the sound of the rain was too much and he would be awake as an owl for hours. Lola was somewhere in the flat, causing destruction with her warpath. Sometimes  Akira felt a little guilty about handing Ryo a puppy so _unstable_ , but most of the time he was sure as hell that the reason that Lola was so crazily self-entitled was because Ryo spoiled her rotten.

“How long have you been awake?” Ryo asked, his voice quiet and vulnerable around the edges. Akira joined their fingers, which looked really good together, and smiled.

“Just now. Sorry, I couldn’t resist but wake you too.”

Ryo sighed, and held a little tighter. “I’m shocked you’re still here. Don’t you have a home?” which, for Ryo, really translated as _I’m so glad you’re here._  

“I will always be with you.” Akira answered him, softly. “Until the end of the line.”

“Yes.” Ryo muttered, his eyes distant, a little blurred. “Until the end of the line.”

  


( _indeed_ ).


End file.
